MOVIE REVIEW

THE SALESMAN

Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 (discussions of violence).

Like his Oscar-winning “A Separation,” Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest, nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film, is an expertly crafted domestic thriller. “The Salesman” includes a play within a play: Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” in which married couple Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) play Willy and Linda Loman.

Their relationship and the production are thrown into chaos when Rana is sexually assaulted in their apartment; the unknown man is thought to be linked to the previous tenant, a woman who, it’s euphemistically said, had “a lot of acquaintances.” Rana refuses to speak about the incident or go to the police; Emad becomes obsessed with finding the attacker himself. Farhadi layers Miller’s themes over a patriarchal response to the assault and its aftermath, marginalizing Rana and never introducing us to the old tenant — only her abandoned shoes and dresses. It’s an effectively feel-bad story, deploying a torrent of wounded, retrograde masculinity to make uttering the word “rape” an even greater transgression than the event itself.